


Soul Shards

by Runespoor



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2014-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 00:45:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>DC with daemons: a collection of snapshots, at times contradictory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Babs and the start of Birds of Prey

“I liked Power Girl,” Jehuti informed, from where he was nestled on Barbara’s lap. He didn’t deign look up to the screen where Babs was looking through the possibles, and Babs had to resist an unreasonable urge to hit something.

“She didn’t like us,” she replied. “And beside, Zorel was the one you liked.”

He stretched, turned, and finally jumped on the desk. Not directly on the keyboard, thankfully. “Flying lion. What’s there not to like?”

As Babs had already debated with Jehuti regarding the advantages of subtlety – and how a flying lion, no matter how far away from their human it could go thanks to their being meta, was decidedly not it – she chose to disregard his intervention. Clicking onto the next photo on her screen was a deliberate choice.

The ermine peered at the screen in a sort of detached inspection, threw his neck back as though recoiling, and inclined his head to glance at Babs. “You _can’t_ be considering the Marvel girl,” he said, condescending. “Has her daemon even settled yet?”

Babs grit her teeth. “Yes, thank you, Jehuti.” Worse than a goddamn cat. 

“Or, well, you could ask Huntress,” Jehuti suggested, who seemed to take perverse pleasure in the charade. “If I can last two minutes in the same conversation as Asper, you can surely do the same. For the sake of professionalism.” 

He was immobile, staring at the footage of Huntress and Asper with a stillness that suddenly told Babs he was imagining fighting them. They’d been denied the opportunity, recently, and they’d had to swallow the insult like the bitter pill of necessity, but long draining nights never were draining enough to stop them from thinking. Today, they’d go for the throat if needed.

Forcing herself to break the train of thought – she was already imagining the patterns, planning the way she’d lure Helena into taking Oracle’s offer – Babs rested her hand on Jehuti’s white back. After a moment, the tension left his slender body.

“Right. Who’s next?” 

He snorted when the next picture to appear on screen was Big Barda’s, in time with Babs’ wistful sigh. They watched Barda make small work of the monstrous creature some puny man in a lab coat was attempting to control, while her daemon, a great African buffalo, grunted menacingly at the rest of the scientists. 

“If you wanted subtlety, this is not it,” Jehuti finally remarked, when Babs sighed for a second time.

“I know,” Barbara said. She lingered mournfully onto the shot of Barda’s daemon rising into the air before smashing into the locked door, and changed channels with a last sigh. “But still. You were the one who wanted strike forces, weren’t you?”

“We have to be realistic.”

The next picture to appear was that of a leather-clad woman dismounting from her bike, and shaking her blond hair free as she took off her helmet. Black Canary. Where was— 

Babs’ breath hitched when Canary’s kestrel daemon dove from the skies and came to rest on her shoulder. The camera Barbara had hacked didn’t convey sound, so she could only guess at the dialogue. The angle—she tried to focus, but the angle wasn’t good enough that she could accurately read Canary’s lips.

She startled when Jehuti’s leg came to rest on her hand, and she looked down, surprised. 

She was expecting him to be restless, perhaps, or to start rattling the objections she knew existed: Canary had been wounded, she’d been aimless, her days of glory dated back from her time in the Justice League. Instead, his gaze at her was profound and weirdly non-confrontational. “Do we really want to work with fliers again?”

He didn’t speak Batman’s name – or Dick’s. He didn’t need to.

Wordlessly, Barbara moved her hand holding the mouse from under Jehuti’s paw, to enlarge the image.

“We have to be realistic,” she mirrored his earlier words. “Flying makes things easier.”


	2. Tim and his daemon imprinting on Dick and his daemon

Up until the moment they see him fly through the air, and his daemon _change_ , right as he reaches the tumbling point of his somersault – his daemon shifting into a bright, wide bird that opened her wings and soared – Tim and Galenos were- 

They were waiting for Tim to grow and Galenos to settle. It would’ve been a lie to say that they found no enjoyment or no use in Galenos’ ability to change. But the changes. The shifts. The sudden bursts of dramatic colors, the theatricality of feral predators, the endless playfulness of four-legged comrades, those were never theirs.

Up until the moment Tim and Galenos see Dick and Zitka, the appeal somehow eludes them.

Galenos is snuggled on Tim’s lap and his breath catches as the same time as Tim’s. “Beautiful,” he whispers.

Tim agrees, mindlessly, because he has even less words than Galenos at that moment.

Beautiful, is always Galenos’ first memory of that night. Even with what happens afterwards – the fall, the screams, the silence. Tim’s mother hiding his face against her side (warm and shuddery, Tim could hear his blood beating in his eardrums) and Verand attempting to do the same with Galenos. 

Even with all that, even with Tim’s nightmares afterwards. When someone talks about that night, even when Tim does, Tim knows Galenos’ first thought is always for Zitka’s glorious flight.

They’re still waiting for Tim to grow up, after that night. Still discuss – gravely and without a hint of the self-aggrandizing fantasies other children entertain – what form Galenos might settle into. They still agree something small and quiet would be best, and Galenos still spends most of his time as small and quiet animals. 

But sometimes Galenos takes an incomprehensibly brightly-colored shape, and he flies and flies, doing quite unreasonable dives, while Tim watches.

“I want to take pictures when you do that,” Tim finally confesses one night, stroking Galenos’ mouse fur.

“It wouldn’t be as good as the real thing,” Galenos replies, but there’s none of his usual wistfulness when talking about Zitka, only a sort of clinical detachment.

When Tim discovers _Peter Pan_ , Galenos is the only one to know it becomes Tim’s favorite story.


	3. and you fly and you fall (Cass and giving the Batgirl suit to Stephanie)

They’re far out of Gotham and the night is kissing dawn when Cass finally breaks the silence.

“Are you still angry?” she asks.

“Does. It matter?” Illo’s voice comes warbled, a whisper. But at least he answers. 

“Yes. I don’t want you to be angry at me.”

Illo’s tail flickers, a cool bracelet unlocking as he shifts. Yes. He’s angry. 

“You always do your mind. I’m not-- You asked I said no.” With her right hand, she pats Illo where he’s coiled around her left wrist. 

She knows from seeing in other people’s eyes that it looks awkward in a way that interaction between human and daemon shouldn’t, but it doesn’t  _feel_ awkward. It never has. 

He doesn’t avoid the touch, but that doesn’t mean he has forgiven her. Illo goes far when Cass wears the costume, his part of the Mission, but when they’re alone and there’s no friendly daemon around he likes to cling as close to her as though nothing can tear them apart.

“Steph needs Batgirl. I like Steph. You like Margot, too.”

Illo shivers, an admission. They both know Cass is saying the truth, but Illo doesn’t like to admit it. Illo never likes leaving, and he especially likes Margot because Margot is so warm. 

“We Bat. We need Bat,” Illo insists when Cass doesn’t reply. “We stay in Gotham home.” 

Swiftly his feet run up her arm, under her T-shirt, until he’s resting on her neck, and she can feel her hair brushing against him. 

“I said we stay. You. Don’t. Listen.”

The black fabric of her shirt stretches emptier than is has any right to be. For a moment, Cass wishes she’d bought one of these souvenir shirts in what Barbara calls tourists traps.  _Gotham, home of the Bat_. An excuse to wear a Bat shape on her chest.

“I can’t stay if he’s not here,” she replies. 

They’ve had this discussion already. Everything that makes her leave, that she can’t stay with Batman dead, can’t wear the Bat on her chest if he’s dead, because she wanted to be him when she grew up, and now he’s dead and she’s still not grown up enough to be him. Gotham hurts her now. 

And Steph will be great. Awesome.

She also knows why he doesn’t want her to leave, why he’s running back down to hide on her belly right now, turning and turning until he stills down. She can picture him walking over her scars. 

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes again. Not both of them have scars, and Illo’s tail has grown back, but it was her fault. 

“Leaving is bad,” Illo frets. “Bad things.”

Cass curls her hand over her stomach, the knot in her throat tightening when she feels Illo’s slim shape tremble under her fingers. “It won’t happen again,” she swears.

“We always try,” Illo answers, and he sounds tired, and hopeful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illo is a lizard.


	4. what makes you think I was alone - version 1 (Bruce and his daemon)

When the mugger shoots, puts down his mother’s lynx and erases his father’s bee, Kiviv lets out a tiny, silent scream and goes up. Up, small black wings flapping wildly in the dark, hiding, fleeing and feeling her way blindly through echolocation. And up while Bruce has fallen to his knees, small and frail and his vision blurry with the stark still shapes of his parents’ bodies. Up. Away.

There’s the sensation of a sting around the area of his heart, then nothing.

The rest of the night happens in a camera quality, without the faintest scratch on the tape. Something that happens to other people on a movie screen, even when a name that sounds like his is repeated. The glaring lights of the police cars finish blinding him. Leslie Thompkins’ voice reverberates around, but dies out before it reaches him. He is in her arms, but he doesn’t feel the pressure of the embrace or the warmth of her coat. 

Kiv flies back in when Alfred is closing Bruce’s window while Mattie waits by the door, watching Bruce, and Bruce looks up, blinking. She’s still wearing her ugly little form as she half stumbles, half crawls up the sheets, and mechanically Bruce takes her in his hands and brings her closer to his face. 

At rest a bat is something very small, small enough that a child can hold it in his hands. Her form is one that used to stalk nightmares, but he feels no disgust and no fear.

Her mouth opens, full of small selfish white teeth and great ears gaping wider than her wings, as though she’s going to speak, but not a word comes out. 

Without a glance Alfred's way, Bruce empties out the drawer of his bedside table, grabs a red piece of fabric he used to play cow-boy with and puts it on the bottom of the drawer, crumpled. Mattie gives Alfred a meaningful look, her wrinkled neck retracted under her shell, gleaming eyes barely emerging amidst the scales. Bruce ignores the turtle and doesn’t look up at Alfred. 

Delicately, he settles Kiv on the makeshift nest.

He doesn’t close the drawer all the way, in case she wants to leave again.


	5. got a date with destiny (Steph becomes Robin for the first time)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (yes, I am fully aware that "Margot" is a female name. Margot doesn't care and neither does Steph.)

It’s been a while since Steph built a costume from scratch. Sure, she’s changed things on the Spoiler suit – added light body armor when Batman made it available to her, did away with the outer thong (yeah, not her brightest costume-designer moment), shifted some pouches around with Cass’ advice – not to mention how many times she’s had to repair and repair and repair it after repeated abuse from rough patrols. By the end, there’s not one piece of her costume that dated back from the first time she put it on, a handful of years ago. 

But design an outfit – completely? Yeah. Been a while.

After the third time the sewing machine eats the fabric, Margot wraps himself around the machine and refuses to move, even when Steph threatens him with bodily harm. 

Of course, she’s got her fist full of Robin-green fabric and her cheeks are flushed with frustration, so she’s not at her most threatening. “Look. So you’re not going to win any prize for this. Who cares? That’s not the point.”

And she can admit: he was right.

“ _So_ right,” Margot comments after Steph finishes the mugger with a kick to the stomach. Technically, they agreed that Steph should just go from point A (her home) to point B (the Cave) to pop before the Batboss, parade around, and get her Robin certificate.

But things never go quite the way they’re supposed to where Steph’s involved, that’s the famous Brown luck.

“Totally right,” she agrees. Her wrist twinges a little beyond the adrenaline; the outfit she’s thrown together isn’t doing much of anything but announce _Robin here!_ in red-green-yellow letters. The sooner she’s at the Cave, the sooner she gets a costume that she can actually fight crime in. 

“Let’s go, let’s go!” Margot is already jumping back, running up the stairs to the roof, and Steph throws her grapple to catch up, laughing with the same excitement as he is.

She takes the leap from the rooftop a second later after the flying squirrel throws himself off the roof, and they’re both of them airborne, risking life and limb for the thrill of shouting at the top of their lungs, wrenching themselves away from the rules of gravity for a few exhilarating instants. 

Her too-light cape flaps in the wind, her ponytail is going to be a bird’s nest such that Galenos would side-eye it so hard (Margot told Steph that Galenos has expressed more that once the wish that Steph’s hair weren’t attached to her head, so he could do something with it), and the cloth ties of her domino mask tickle her neck, and Steph is screaming in delight, throat and lungs raw with the cool night air.

“This is our best idea ever!” she shouts before they land.

“Fuckin’ a!” Margot calls back, and then, as he reaches the next roof, “come on, hurry, slowpoke!”


	6. I know there’s stuff in small font but where do I sign? (Tim Drake, Conner Kent, do clones have daemons?)

It’s the best argument Tim found for Superboy having a soul. He had a daemon, didn’t he? There was nothing Batman could say to that.

It used to bother Kon, that Krypto hadn’t settled yet. “Not many sixteen-year-old out there whose daemon still changes shapes,” he said, dejected. “No offense,” he added for Krypto’s benefit.

“Zui hasn’t settled yet either!” Bart would interject then, and Kon would make a weird face, obviously thinking it wasn’t helping. 

“Yeah, but you’re fifteen. I’m _six_ teen!”

“You’re younger than I am in non-subjective time,” Bart pointed out, and he’d zip out of the conversation.

Kon grimaced and Galenos said, imperturbable, “What you meant is, Agon was already a hawk by the time you met Cassie.” Kon shot Tim a wounded, accusing look, like it was somehow Tim’s fault that Galenos hit the nail on the head. Galenos chuckled, twisting his head around so he could look back at the computer screen Tim would be busy with, and Tim would remind Kon in a matter-of-fact tone that Galenos hadn’t yet settled when _they_ had met.

“I don’t see why you’re so worried,” Krypto said. “Being able to shapeshift forever is _awesome_!” And he’d turn into a lion, or a dragon, or a playful dog with a lolling tongue. “You’re all going to grow wrinkly and old, and I’ll stay spry and beautiful forever!”

Kon’s discomfited sigh before he followed Krypto away was loud enough to drown Galenos’. Tim didn’t comment. They all agreed Krypto was in denial, but what could they do about it?

It’s Tim’s first argument, too, when Kon has just found out his genes are 50% Lex Luthor’s and is upset over the possibility that he might be evil. 

“You’re not him. Look at Krypto. You’re not Lex Luthor, and you’re not Superman either. Who your parents are doesn’t matter,” he advised, and pretended not to see the way Galenos closed his eyes, slowly, against the lie.

It’s not enough, but it’s a starting comfort, at least, and Krypto’s moist nose against Kon’s hand steals a smile out of him. Krypto likes the dog form, Tim’s noted, and Galenos analyses that it’s because of the playfulness and the loyalty of that animal. Tim thinks of all the henchmen he’s seen over the years with a majority of dog daemons, and prefers not to say anything.

Galenos’ wings rustle in the silence when the ninety-seventh attempt to clone Conner fails, and Tim restrains the sudden urge to smash it – smash it all, his precious hidden cave in the bowels of Titans Tower and the priceless equipment, until there’s nothing but the mementos he’s saved of Kon.

“Tim,” Galenos says. Tim can hear the pain in his voice. Can other people? He hopes he doesn’t sound so transparent. “This isn’t working.”

Tim lets his head fall against the glass case. “I know,” he says, voice muffled by the Kevlar of his costume. He takes a breath, clears his voice. “Computer. Launch attempt ninety eight.”

Later, when they’re alone in Tim’s room and Tim is tired enough that he’s confusing the security routine check he does in Gotham with the one adapted to the Tower (tired enough that he might stop lying to himself), Galenos asks, “how are you going to do, for Conner’s daemon?”

Galenos thinks Tim’s efforts doomed to failure as long as Krypto – as a daemon doesn’t coalesce into existence while the clone grows.

Tim doesn’t—Tim doesn’t.

“We’ll see,” Tim answers, but maybe that’s too close to the truth still, so he compromises, “we’ve got things, to help him remember. Tapes, and stuff.”

“You’d take him even without Krypto.” Galenos’ voice is quiet, level. If there’s a judgment there Tim is too tired to hear it.

“I would,” he agrees.

“You’d take him even without a daemon.”

Tim looks at Galenos, but the long-eared owl’s ember-colored eyes stare back, smooth as glass, and give away nothing.

“Yes,” Tim says. “Even without a daemon.”

They stare at one another, the boy and the daemon, until Tim’s eyelids droop despite his will.

“Go to sleep,” Galenos finally says. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”


	7. Red (the Jason trilogy)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What was Jason's daemon when he was Robin? Does he come back without one? Does that make him more of a pariah than he would otherwise be? Or what?

.  
 **Robin.**  
.

When he met Jason for the first time, Jason’s daemon had already settled. At first, Bruce didn’t realize. There was a small bird on the boy’s shoulder, but street kids with small, fast – dusty-colored daemons are ten a dozen. Mice to hide, rats to fight, and birds often enough that the expression “scatter like a flock of sparrows” is a cliché that makes Bruce’s lip curls when he overhears it at a fundraiser.

It struck Laylah that the boy’s daemon didn’t act as look-out, but when she was mistrustful for a second, Bruce was delighted; and after that, she was as taken with Del as he was with Jason. 

 

“The boy is older than all of us,” she affirmed when Jim voiced objections. Doubts. She’d puffed to make herself look bigger and had looked Elou right in the eye. 

After the first moment, Laylah never had any doubt.

Bruce didn’t understand at once that Del didn’t shift. The shape she’d settled on was— “convenient” or “practical” missed something; “fitting” might be better— such that it didn’t seem strange at all to see her keep it, even when Jason got into the car, with a slight smile on his features, and the shrike perched on Jason’s knee and shook itself, beak cocked in the air. Laylah had shifted back to a bat and was clinging to the car’s roof, watching the bird. 

 

It was Laylah who told him, later. If that was a surprise to Bruce, he could never remember it; afterwards, it felt as though he’d always known.

 

“Your daemon’s shape is supposed to say a lot about you. When you’re a kid, it mostly says a lot about how you live,” Jason said once, later, and that, too, made sense.

Small, winged so it was never an issue to disappear over the rooftops, and dangerous, Del was perfectly suited to the Mission. To Robin. Laylah startled when Alfred commented, half-joking, that it sounded like Jason and Bruce had been fated to meet.

 

Maybe it explained Laylah’s fascination for Del. Laylah herself had never settled, and in the streets – off the streets, more and more often – she’d take a form that could accompany Del.

His fault that he wasn’t there to stop Garzonas from falling. Her fault for not alerting him that Jason had gone.

Bruce tries not to discuss it with Laylah.

 

“I think he’s right,” Laylah says, quiet, when Jason has slammed the door shut.

Bruce closes his eyes and tries to cling to the shreds of control he can feel, sliding from the grip he still has on his soul.

.  
 **(Lost)**  
.

“There is nothing you can do for him,” Ra’s finally tells her, almost half a year after she has taken the boy in. “He is dead inside.”

And it’s true that in the unnatural stillness of Jason’s eyes Talia can find nothing of the pale passion she’s learned to read in Bruce’s: no flames or ice, or the roiling trouble of deep seas. He bears on the world eyes dull like sea-glass, and when she allows herself doubt Talia fears the boy she’s rescued maybe be gone after all, only a flesh puppet left behind.

“He has no daemon,” Shywar points then, the only time Talia will permit him. He’s been ill at ease around Jason since the beginning for just that reason, as have all the daemons of her father’s men. She hasn’t been able to obtain the response whether it’s because it’s something they feel, or something they know. Shywar has been unhelpful.

And yet, when her father turns his attention Jason’s way, Shywar puts himself between them, slides to Jason and curls by his side, protective. He disapproves, but Talia made Jason something of her own, and so he should be treated.

“Why let him touch you, if you find him so offensive?” she asks, and the fennec’s wide, expressive ears flick in angry response.

“I thought we were doing everything we could,” he retorts. “I touch him because if he is alive, he needs to be touched. He reacts to it, at least. I think he likes it.”

Jason does. His hand strokes down Shywar’s fur, and if it is mechanical it’s not necessary, not the way the training her beloved embedded in Jason’s limbs and skin is, that has him putting down quickly and bloodily (if not lethally) anyone who attempts to harm him. Those are not the actions of the self-defensive shell her father thinks he is. 

“Do you have an idea why he’s a statue when you’re the one touching him?” Shywar asks, one day when they’re on the cliff, and he’s put himself in Jason’s lap, eyes half-closed.

Her hand may be on Jason’s shoulder, or her arms around him, and still there is no sign that Talia is embracing a live human being, only the warmth of his body and the silent rhythm of his breathing to tell her so. 

Talia thinks of Bruce, and smiles without humor at Shywar. “Yes. I do.”

“Beloved screwed him but good,” Shywar says, non-committal, and Talia doesn’t rebuke him.

 

Jason cries when Talia tells him about Bruce, face damp with tears and sea sprays, salt on salt.

Shywar shifts.

“Even your father has a daemon,” he says. Pensive.

“There’s nothing we can do for him,” she echoes her father’s words, “but maybe the Pit can.”

.  
 **Red Hood.**  
.

There’s a void inside Jason. He knows what Talia thinks, or if not Talia, Shywar. 

They see there’s no daemon by his side, and they assume whatever is eating at Jason comes from that place – like there’s a gland missing inside his head. That can’t keep the emotions down and regulated and nice and in order any more, like it’s all always rumbling just under the surface, and at the slightest shift in the atmosphere it’ll erupt out of him.

He knows Bruce will think the same, and take it upon himself. Majestic rags of guilt he wraps around like he’s the only one with a right to them, arrogant like a Catholic monk who’s forgotten about humility, taking comfort in the brands of his self-castigation.

They’re wrong. Jason does miss the way Del would rest on his shoulder, or pipe right back atcha. He misses the strident laughter that used to echo his, and the way she flew, sharp and rapid strokes of wings. But he can still feel her as if she was here, Del’s certitude added to his own: like when he died she returned to his body, and when he returned to life she didn’t leave him. 

Talia told him of the state he was in when she found him. Months lost to a zombie-like nothing. “Empty,” she said, and Jason hardly needs to have been trained by the world’s greatest detective to know that’s what she thinks it means, that Jason doesn’t have a daemon even after the Pit. 

It isn’t. It’s something older – practically ancient for how long Jason’s known it.

He used to mutter things of this void to Del, once upon a time. When he was still Robin and it felt like there was this huge, gaping thing growing inside him. Tearing at things, things like his heart, or his lungs, or other things that you can’t measure so easily – like maybe his patience, or—or the distance between him and the line.

_The_ line. 

But it’s not Del. He should know; he’s the one who doesn’t have a daemon. Talia’s not convinced, but it doesn’t stop Shywar from climbing on Jason’s lap when she visits.

Of all the people Jason’s met there’s only the Joker who doesn’t have a daemon. That’s not really why Jason chooses to become Red Hood, but it’s still funnier than any joke the Joker’s come up with in the past decade. 

That Jason’s going to put him down, that’s not supposed to be funny: that’s poetic justice.


End file.
